Sunday, June 14, 2009
Editorial: Local ballots will be barren in November
Most candidates for local offices are running unopposed.
From the RoundTable blog
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When the November general election arrives, voters in the New River Valley will not find many options on their ballots. The filing deadline passed last week, and the majority of races are uncontested.
A common political aphorism goes along these lines: The only performance review that matters to a politician comes on Election Day. Every few years, elected officials who want to keep their jobs must face voters.
That system lies at the core of our representative democracy. Periodically the people get a chance to select someone new if they want, to judge incumbents and to weigh the policy ideas of multiple candidates.
At least that is how it should work.
The most interesting local race this fall will take place in Blacksburg where 10 candidates have filed to fill four council seats.
Only a few other races are contested. A couple of Montgomery County School Board incumbents face challengers. Four people are running for two seats on the Floyd Town Council. One seat on the Floyd County Board of Supervisors has two aspirants, as does one on the school board.
Yet many more local races are wastes of ballot ink. More than a dozen positions will be filled without competition.
In Radford, four incumbent constitutional officers will keep their jobs. So will two supervisors and two school board members in Giles County. And in Montgomery County, three members of the board of supervisors and the mayor of Blacksburg all will coast to another term.
That is not healthy for government in the New River Valley. Without competitive races, there is neither chance for an honest assessment of incumbents nor a real opportunity for citizens to debate how they want their communities to move forward.
One cannot even chalk it all up to partisanship. In many races, candidates run without party affiliations.
Alas, it is too late to change things for November. Late-arriving aspirants could stage write-in campaigns, but barring a scandal involving an incumbent, those rarely succeed. Apparently this year it was too easy for everyone to conclude someone else would enter the democratic fray.
Maybe these unopposed officials are doing such a bang-up job that they deserve election or, more often, re-election. They still should have had to earn it.
